How do you 'start' PvP?

So I've decided to bring one of my 90's out of retirement (Arms Warrior) witht he intent to start doing PvP.

The thing is, I have no idea where to begin. Every PvP player in BGs wipes the floor with me and rated arena, just lol. Every advert on trade looking for folk for RBG or anything requires top of the line gear.

Where do you start? Is it too late to start PvP now that people have gear from the last seasons? What do you do these days when a fresh 90 dings and you want to jump in the arena?

Well, luckily you've decided to start in PvP when a new season is about to start (perfect timing) because this means that everyone else will be earning the new seasons gear at the same time you are. Right now, you can earn Tyrannical gear (496) with honor from the PvP vendors, which is the same gear everyone got last season for conquest - so you'll be in the exact same gear as everyone else going into the new season if you gear up now.

Gear is fairly expensive per piece (1.5-2.2k honor per piece), but if you do the Tol'barad weekly, kill these NPCs at the Dominion Offensive (Dalan, Disha and Mavis) and BG inbetween their 45-60 minute respawn times, it shouldn't take too long to be fully geared. And, as Lazy Gecko said, if you don't feel comfortable in BGs in your current gear you can either get crafted PvP gear or even get ilevel 496 gear from timeless isles, PvE gear is still pretty good - just isn't the best.

As for learning how to PvP, it's worth checking out PvE guides to get a feel for the rotation and to know how to do the best damage possible - even though some of it wont apply to PvP, it's definitely worth knowing what the ideal damage rotation is. Secondly, check out this guide (someone might have a better one, this is the first I came across and it seems okay). One thing to note is that guide probably isn't updated for 5.4, where a lot of changes happened for Warriors. If anything doesn't add up, play around with it yourself and see what feels/seems better.

During the new season, see if you can find other people to cap with you each week. There will probably be channels etc for finding Arena partners now you can group and queue through battletag, I know a site which is trying to push for an Arena chat where you can find partners. If you enjoy capping with some of the people, add them to friends and see if they want to push for rating some time. Eventually you might find a third and you can try out 3s.

Well, luckily you've decided to start in PvP when a new season is about to start (perfect timing) because this means that every else will be earning the new seasons gear at the same time you are. Right now, you can earn Tyrannical gear (496) with honor from the PvP vendors, which is the same gear everyone got last season - so you'll be in the exact same gear as everyone else going into the new season if you're gear up now.

Gear is fairly expensive per piece (1.5-2.2k honor per piece), but if you do the Tol'barad weekly, kill these NPCs at the Dominion Offensive (Dalan, Disha and Mavis) and BG inbetween their 45-60 minute respawn times, it shouldn't take too long to be fully geared. And, as Lazy Gecko said, if you don't feel comfortable in BGs in your current gear you can either get crafted PvP gear or even get ilevel 496 gear from timeless isles, PvE gear is still pretty good - just isn't the best.

As for learning how to PvP, it's worth checking out PvE guides to get a feel for the rotation and to know how to do the best damage possible - even though some of it wont apply to PvP, it's definitely worth knowing what the ideal damage rotation is. Secondly, check out this guide (someone might have a better one, this is the first I came across and it seems okay). One thing to note is that guide probably isn't updated for 5.4, where a lot of changes happened for Warriors. If anything doesn't add up, play around with it yourself and see what feels/seems better.

During the new season, see if you can find other people to cap with you each week. There will probably be channels etc for finding Arena partners now you can group and queue through battletag, I know a site which is trying to push for an Arena chat where you can find partners. If you enjoy capping with some of the people, add them to friends and see if they want to push for rating some time. Eventually you might find a third and you can try out 3s.

I hope you know how to play your warrior. If not, go search for some both pvp and pve guides and tricks. Afterwards, get some crafted pvp pieces and farm for honor gear. Don't forget to gem/enchant your new honor gear, yes it makes a big difference. Also, don't forget to get proffesions. Once you got full honor (tyranical) gear the season will probably start.

Once the season starts practice with your friends. If you have no friends, good, you have wow. Start looking for 2s for caps in trade chat or guild. Practice with both dps and a healer, even better with skype or w/e. Afterwards, if you find people you do good with start doing 3s. You will probably find RBG groups for cap in the trade chat- join them or wait for those that don't ask for exp (tbh these are less likely).

By now you will probably have some exp and achis, so glhf. Hope this helps.

PvE is a minigame // Rerolled from affly to spriest after 8 years, thx pandaland changes

Besides what the above posters said, once you get some starter pvp gear ( lets say honor gear) and the season starts try to do some of these things ( if not all of them if you have the time ):

You need to learn the basics before actually going anywhere,because lets face it, nobody wants to play arena with someone who doesn't know the basics.

1- keybind everything ( find the binds that you feel most comfortable with ).

2- make macros to things that need to be macro'd ( you can look for useful macros on arenajunkies or other sites).

3- you need to know what other classes can do, aka cds / abilities etc, as well as become potent in knowing how to deal with them, this part comes with experience but you can hasten the process through the following :

*step 1: this might seem boring but read up on all class abilities and talents , as well as glyphs, see what they can do , you know the saying, knowledge is power

*step 2: even though people overlook this, it has been the starting point in developing reflexes and learning the very basics of your class in pvp, which is through the act of dueling.
People underestimate dueling but it does help you learn a lot by knowing what to expect from other classes and knowing how to counter them ,although it does not mean mastering your basics will make you an arena god, it simply helps you polish your rough edges so to say.

So once you have your basic honor gear , get outside your main capital city and start dueling every single class to get used to it, do it thousands of time,duel your own class too, it all helps build counter strategies and boosts your reflexes.

If you find you cannot beat a certain class no matter what you do, look at other warriors who are better than you and see what they do, do not be ashamed to ask them for tips, if you cannot find good warriors on your server, either server hop by making a lvl 1 on a popular hub or simply join a friend who is on said server, then watch good warriors duel and see what they do in situations where u could not react or simply did not know what to do.

So to sum it up, after you get your basic honor gear, do the above to help you learn your basics.
Watching streams and videos online can help hasten the learning process even faster if you have the time to do so.
All the while cap your conquest weekly so you are up to date with everyone else( although you wont be getting points like higher rated people , you will at least be getting something every week until you have enough knowledge to start playing arena seriously).

This post is somewhat long, I hope it has helped you a bit

Edit: PS: do not keyboard turn or back pedal please, these slow down your movements, so use your mouse to turn ( I know this is obvious to most but some still do it so had to say it ^^).

Others have given some good information. If you have the gold, if I were you, I would buy the crafted last season gear. If not...a lot of us still sit through the grind of having to survive in no pvp gear at all.

A great tip is to do the timeless isle and get the epics that drop that are 496 PVE epics and just use them as a little boost to yourself if you have no other gear at all. It's going to be tough having no pvp gear, but it will greatly increase your skill the more and more that you bg/pvp in general.

You can do it man! We believe!!!

Originally Posted by Vampz

inb4 "flying is a major part of the reason I have fun in wow!"Buy a fucking flight sim then

The current best pvp gear is available for honor until tuesday, just farm it all to be on the same level. From there it's just a matter of using BGs and duels to practice, find low mmr RBG pugs looking to cap points, or people looking for 2v2 to cap. That way you will build a bit of rating up. Eventually you will be comfortable and can start looking for people wanting to push rating.

Thanks to the base Resilience buff (72%!) you'll find yourself surviving surprisingly long for a player lack PvP gear. Your damage will suck, sorry, everyone goes through it. However being alive for X amount of time will allow you to practise your PvP "rotation"/ priority order (Hamstring, Colossus Smash, etc) as well as getting used to your keybinds. I'm sure you are familiar with most of your moves or will be by the time you hit 90, so that's something you don't need to worry about.

The part I find sucky is the gems and enchants. As said, start of a season, woo! Start of a new season and raid tier, ah. AH prices sky rocket around this time.

I heal in the Arena
Retired Moderator - Priest and PvPYou can follow me @UltimaMMO_C

I go into a normal battleground, you try your hardest and die because the gear discrepancy will be too much to overcome, you keep going until your team wins without you.

Repeat 50+ times.

Get full gear. Go into battleground, wreck people that were in the same situation as you and feel powerful, team with most healers wins.

Get bored of PvP, try PvE, kill garrosh on first attempt in LFR, Have no time to raid in proper guild, get bored of facerolling LFR, Unsub till next patch in 10 months time after reading about all the amazing new class changes and promises. Game is still the same as it was 12 years prior, unsub, hail new MMO as the sucessor to wow, it fails, delete posts, re-sub, repeat from start.

I go into a normal battleground, you try your hardest and die because the gear discrepancy will be too much to overcome, you keep going until your team wins without you.

Repeat 50+ times.

Get full gear. Go into battleground, wreck people that were in the same situation as you and feel powerful, team with most healers wins.

Get bored of PvP, try PvE, kill garrosh on first attempt in LFR, Have no time to raid in proper guild, get bored of facerolling LFR, Unsub till next patch in 10 months time after reading about all the amazing new class changes and promises. Game is still the same as it was 12 years prior, unsub, hail new MMO as the sucessor to wow, it fails, delete posts, re-sub, repeat from start.

Sorry, got carried away.

I think most of us go down that road...

But on topic, just follow what the first few posts said. It's sad I don't have time to dedicate to wow anymore

Don't buy the pvp crafted gear, its absolutely rubbish. A big waste of gems, enchants and money.
Go to the Timeless Isle, spend one hour getting the 496/502 pve gear, get the 502 barrens quest boots.
Farm the mobs in the wilds and do the Thunder Island/Grizly hills quests for honor.
Wait untill next weekend to farm AV.